Make New Friends

by Fallowsthorn

Epilogue: I'm Telling Celestia

"And then he actually sings it, like he thinks I'm not going to figure out it's a lame pun!" Twilight paced across Celestia's balcony, fuming. "Ugh! He can be so... so frustrating!"

Celestia was taking advantage of Twilight's distraction to hide her smile behind a hoof. All things considered, she was proud of Discord for finding humor in a harmless prank like this instead of something that could endanger her ponies. He'd come a long way with the help of his friends.

That, and she'd be lying if she tried to tell herself it wasn't funny to see Twilight so worked up over being pranked. The mare needed to learn how to laugh at herself sometimes.

Twilight finally noticed. "What are you smiling at?" she cried. "I thought we had a real crisis on our hooves!"

"Oh, my faithful student," Celestia said, now grinning openly. "It seems I do have more to teach you after all. When it comes to pranks, you don't get mad. You get even."

"Huh?" Twilight blinked and forgot to keep pacing. "But...."

"Don't you know the rest of the song?" Celestia lifted her voice. "'A circle is round, it has no end; that's how long I want to be your friend.'"

"...I mean, that's nice," Twilight said dubiously.

Celestia shook her head. "How likely is it that Discord doesn't know the whole thing? Considering it's only four lines."

Twilight still wasn't following, but she trusted Celestia. "Okay, so he couldn't think of more puns for the second half. What does that have to do with...?"

"And how often have you known Discord to actually say what he means without hiding it behind three or four layers of misdirection, especially if it's something he doesn't want to admit?"

"Almost never...." Twilight's eyes flicked back and forth as she put the pieces together. "You think it was a super convoluted way of saying he values my friendship?"

Celestia shrugged her wings. "Maybe, maybe not. He might even have done it without realizing he meant the implications. I don't know. What I do know is this: it sounds believable, and it will bother him immensely."

Now Twilight was starting to smirk. She rubbed her hooves together. "Oh, yes. I think I can work with that."

---

"I don't know what you told your Mini Me," a little doodle of Discord said from the letter Celestia was writing, some hours later, "but I don't appreciate the slander she's spreading around as a result."

Celestia drew a mustache on him. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she said, with the serene smile she'd perfected centuries ago playing poker with Luna.

"'I'm sure I don't know what you--' oh, there's no way she thought of that on her own. Admit it!"

It was times like this she was grateful for literally hundreds of years of practice at diplomacy. Otherwise she'd probably be laughing herself sick. "If you can't take the heat, Discord, get out of the kitchen."

"You -- arrgh!" Doodlecord made a rude gesture at her and scampered off the page. Celestia allowed her smile to turn into a smirk and floated her tea up to take a sip, interested to see what he'd turned it into this time.

Mm. Jalapeño. Delicious.

Comments

[Fallowsthorn]

9693102
Oops, yep, thanks for the catch!

[PresentPerfect]

Weirdly, the feghoot was almost a non-entity; this was plenty funny on its own. :D